Musix, BLAG, and DYNE:BOLIC, share a few common features which all conspire to turn off potential new users: incomplete/amateurish websites, too much talk about "overthrows" of proprietary software or free software "revolutions" (to the detriment of promoting the features of the OS itself)

Well... that's also what I found when I arrived into blag. Even omouse found a bug tracker, that I think none of you even remembered! Maybe the website would need a little clean up. I don't talk about removing the talks about "overthrows" of proprietary software. They are a complete part of blag philosophy. But at least regrouping things in a clear way!

Also look at the website : lots of things have not been updated, links still point to 90k.

And I was thinking : blag is coming back, 2-3 years after its last release. Why not coming back in beauty, on all aspects : the release of course, but also website, communication etc. What would you think about it?

As long as we keep the revolutionary romantics, i'm all for looking at the structure of things: interfaces, presentations, links, wiki menus, etc. I think we should stick to the different channels we are using (site/forum/wiki/riseup/irc), but maybe tie them better together. Not all blaggers are fond of riseup, but i find it useful (if a little slow to navigate), and would like to continue supporting it. There has been some nice design ideas around, and in terms of style, i think we should stick quite close to what we have, incorporating the BLAG colours and icons.

Ok, since we now seem to be in the situation where new people are arriving and have problems figuring out what infrastructure we have at our hands I'll try to give a short overview. Hopefully it will be possible to expand this in a useful wiki-page and of course make the infrastructure useful and interconnected in a way that there is imminent sense.

The current situation arose after the departure of jebba. We tried to find ways to communicate and work effective and resilient, therefor populated many different platforms to find out what works best and make it impossible for everything to go down at once.

old infrastructure:

IRC on indymedia
this forum on Jason's server
the blagblagblag.org, afair on the same server but now accessible and editable by Junichiro
the bugzilla
the wiki was moved from one of jebba's servers to aktivix.org
several no longer active MLs hosted by jebba:
blag-users (for user discussion, was crosslinked to the discussion forum)
blag-development (for development discussion, was crosslinked to the dev forum)
blag-static (heavy traffic list that was fed with notes and from several scripts)

new infrastructure:

crabgrass / riseup was set up to have a basis that included tools for discussion and development and was hosted externally and hence unlikely to go down
blag-whereto ML at aktivix was immediately created to disuss what to do after all infrastructure had been down
new blag-static ML at aktivix
blag.fsf.org as development box at FSF
'' provides TRAC via http, which is intended to replace bugzilla and be linked to the development via GIT (has not been set up yet)
there had been plans to link everything via Drupal-instances but so far only zenblagger.org exists, afaik.

That's everything that comes to my mind right now, would be nice to elaborate on this later. i hope it is so far of any help to anyone.

Musix, BLAG, and DYNE:BOLIC, share a few common features which all conspire to turn off potential new users: incomplete/amateurish websites, too much talk about "overthrows" of proprietary software or free software "revolutions" (to the detriment of promoting the features of the OS itself)

Ahh, that old song again. These people think this is a popularity contest and miss the point of OS like Musix, BLAG and DYNE:BOLIC, these distros are for people whose ideology are the same as the distro's. If new users download and install them without any research or information on what the main philosophy of the distro is, are we the ones who are at fault?

I think not! we don't mind anyone using the OS but we do mind them telling us to change our direction to please these people.....Ohhh, I just remembered they can use Ubuntu or MS Windoze. If they come to a distro such as BLAG it's because they like the distro they don't have to agree with whatever is written on the website or forum, they can always freely state their opinions and so can we.

I completely agree with you weyasey. In my mind, Blag's philosophy and ideas in terms of free software and politics have the same importance as the distribution itself.

But, even if we don't mind anyone using the OS, that's not a reason to kick out users that could be potentially interested into our distro.

If I look at the website, what do I see :
- the welcoming page is really ok, clear and precise.
- forum : ok, no problem
- documentation : points to the wiki, no problem
- mailing list : ok, just need to refresh a bit the page
- Downloads : still points to 90k
- features : links to the wiki doesn't work, still 90k and older package presentation...
- mail order CD : talking about this, I think we should give our own cds with a small packaging. Will talk about it later.
- developpers : this is quite a mess :s we should try to organize it a bit more
- blagsterix : nothing really to say
- linux-libre : I would regroup on a page with texts about our point of view of free software and all that stuff.

So, maybe I'm completely wrong, but it's been about one year I've been there and I'm still discovering some new things on the website. What would a new user do? He might feel completely lost :s -

linux-libre is just about the kernel. Not about all free software philosophy.
All the links point to 90k because it's the last stable release. After 140k release we'll have to rebuild all that. But remember the site has to move on fsf server.

The trouble with the revolutionary language is that most people won't see it as a metaphor and they'll think it sounds too harsh. It's the same with the word "struggle" or "oppression" or even "freedom", they all sound a little rough. For example, some people talk about an army of labour, but in fact there's no such thing.

Maybe it's time for a new metaphor that makes the opposition to capitalism/corporatism less violent and confrontational and more persuasive sounding; basically instead of hitting someone on the head with a club, shake their hand with a velvet glove :-P

as concerns the talk of overthrow and revolution:
I disagree with some of the philosophy, and yet I am here. I use every version of Blag that comes out. I talk about blag to almost every *nixer I meet. Are people implying that it may turn some people off? Yes. Will it turn off those who have an open mind? No. Does Blag wish to attract the close-minded? I doubt it.

As for site obfuscation, I honestly believe that the site would require very little reworking. PLEASE DON'T CHANGE THE ARTWORK AROUND THE SITE. I loves it. Perhaps just updating all of the links and information would work.

ABSOLUTELY!
And I'm the only one to have access now. So they talk, they talk and so on.
I'll update and maintain it with 140k release; but I need someone to read it and correct it if there is misspelling as I'm French speaking. Do you want to help me?

ABSOLUTELY!And I'm the only one to have access now. So they talk, they talk and so on.I'll update and maintain it with 140k release; but I need someone to read it and correct it if there is misspelling as I'm French speaking. Do you want to help me?

i can help you

my english is better than my french but this is also part of my being Blag's offuscation :)

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